Gay priests quit church over celibacy

By Victoria Combe, Religion Correspondent

12:01AM BST 17 Aug 2001

FOUR Church of England priests have resigned in the last year in protest at the Church's ban on gay clergy having relationships.

Among them is the Rev Martin Kelly, who is the first priest who has wanted to publicise his reasons for leaving the ministry after 18 years. Mr Kelly, 46, who until now has been priest-in-charge of St Andrew's Church, Limpsfield Chart, Kent, said he could no longer endure the "hypocrisy" in the Church.

He has sent his letter of resignation to the Bishop of Southwark, the Rt Rev Tom Butler, saying he no longer wants to be treated as a "second class human being". He said: "There is a rule of celibacy for homosexuals but not for heterosexuals and I cannot live with the double standards any more."

Mr Kelly said the "turning point" came for him three years ago when 800 bishops of the Anglican Communion discussed homosexuality at the Lambeth Conference in Canterbury.

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"I realised then I could not be declared from on high an inferior being. It has taken me three years to actually go, and I am still grieving." Following Lambeth, the bishops of the Church of England are preparing a new statement on sexuality.

Their last document, Issues in Human Sexuality, published in 1991, forbade priests from having gay relationships. Mr Kelly, who trained at Ripon College in Cuddesdon, Oxon, was curate in Clapham Old Town, south London, before becoming chaplain to Selwyn and Newnham colleges in Cambridge.

Mr Kelly said: "I have stayed as long as I have because I feel called to be a priest. I did not ask to be gay. I did not ask to be Christian. It is what I am." He and his boyfriend, Rob, lived together briefly at the vicarage. They now have a house in Westerham, Kent.

British clergymen are so disillusioned with their jobs that many are planning early retirement to escape the stress, it was claimed yesterday.

The Rev Roger Brown, a member of the MSF trade union, wrote in its newsletter that the time had arrived for "radical decisions". He wrote: "It seems to me we are in a situation where radical decisions are needed.

"We simply cannot carry on painting over the cracks or alleging God will provide. Many of us feel He's put us here in this place and in this mess in order to ensure these radical decisions are made.

"It is hardly any wonder many clergy are living with stress and many . . . are counting the days to retirement. Nor is it any wonder clergy marriages are crumbling or that pressurise